Bulgaria has been in the Eastern Orthodox community a century longer than Russia. Boris I, king of the Bulgarians, is baptized in865 and brings his people to the faith five years later. But Bulgarians are deprived of their sense of national and religious identity in the long centuries of Turkish dominion, beginning in1393.

The reason is not only the brutalities of Turkish rule, more oppressive here than elsewhere in the Balkans. It is also that the sultans in Istanbul disregard the Orthodox tradition of autonomous churches. They place all Orthodox Christians within the empire under the authority of a Greek patriarch in Istanbul.

Thus even Christian culture and education during the Turkish centuries is Greek rather than Bulgarian. Greek becomes the language of the small educated class.

As in independence movements elsewhere (Bohemia, for example, or Albania), it is through demands relating to language that the first stirrings of nationalism are felt. In the early 19th century a few books begin to be written in Bulgarian, and in 1835 the first Bulgarian school is opened. By the middle of the next decade there are some fifty Bulgarian schools and five Bulgarian printing presses.

Next come the demands of religion. The Greek hierarchy has suppressed the ancient Slavonic liturgy, devised in the 9th century by Cyril and Methodius and written in an alphabet probably created by their followers in Bulgaria. Pressure for the revival of this ancient rite goes hand in hand with a campaign for the reinstatement of a Bulgarian patriarch. This is finally granted in 1870, when the Turkish sultan gives authority for an independent exarchate controlling fifteen Bulgarian dioceses.

By this time the more conventional ingredients of 19th-century revolution are also in place. There are Bulgarian secret societies working for national liberation. Their efforts bear fruit in an uprising of 1876.

Bulgarian atrocities: 1876-1877

A revolt breaks out in the region of Plovdiv in May 1876. It is suppressed with extreme ferocity, at the hands of the Turkish volunteers known as bashibazouks. Within a short space of time some 15,000 Bulgarians are massacred, with the destruction of more than fifty villages and five monasteries.

These events heighten the anti-Turkish feeling already evident in Hercegovina's revolt. In June Serbia declares war on Turkey. By the end of that month sensational details of Turkish atrocities begin to appear in the European press. They are not reliably authenticated until late August, when they provoke one of the most famous of English political pamphlets.

William Gladstone, by now a retired elder statesman, is in bed with gout when he reads an incontrovertible account of the events in Bulgaria. In three days he pens a passionate attack on Turkey under the title The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. The pamphlet, demanding in Highly colourful terms that the Turks pull out of Bulgaria, proves a sensation. 40,000 copies are sold in the first week of September and 200,000 by the end of the month.

With European public opinion inflamed against them, the Turks allow a conference to be held in Istanbul on the Balkan issue. But they make no concessions. In March 1877 the Turkish parliament even declares there is no further need for the traditional Russian protection of Christians in the Ottoman empire.

War to the brink at San Stefano: 1877-1878

In April 1877 Russia declares war on Turkey, with Romania coming in on Russia's side. At first the Turks are able to resist the Russian advance through Bulgaria, holding them in an engagement at Pleven in July. But by December the Russians have taken Edirne and are in a position to threaten Istanbul itself.

This success drastically alters the international situation, reviving the fears of the western powers at the prospect of Russia benefiting from the collapse of Turkey. Public opinion in London in particular, orchestrated by the prime minister Disraeli, now swings violently against Russia.

The anti-Russian sentiment of 1878 is the original example of British jingoism. Music-hall crowds bellow out each night the song of the moment - promising what will happen, By Jingo, if the British have to fight. 'We've got the ships', the lyrics of the song proclaim. Disraeli sends six of them, the latest ironclads, through the Straits.

When the British fleet drops anchor within sight of Istanbul, in February 1878, the Russian army is at the village of San Stefano just six miles west of the city. Rather than risk war with Britain, the Russians refrain from attacking Istanbul. Instead, they make a treaty at San Stefano with the Turks - along lines already tentatively agreed at Edirne in January.

San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin: 1878

The treaty of San Stefano gives Russia and the pan-Slav movement almost everything that could have been hoped for. Serbia and Romania are now to be fully independent, having previously been merely autonomous regions within the Ottoman empire. Even more significant, Bulgaria is to become a vast principality bordered by the Danube in the north, the Black Sea in the east and the Aegean in the south.

This area comprises more than half the Balkan peninsula and includes a population of some four million. It is also certain to be under the direct influence of Russia. The western powers, confronted with these major changes in the Balkans, convene a congress to consider them.

The congress is held in Berlin. The other powers insist upon the reduction of this 'greater Bulgaria', limiting the new principality (which is to be autonomous but under the sovereignty of the Turkish sultan) to the region between the Danube and the Balkan mountains. The area south of the mountains, but not reaching the Aegean, is to be the new Turkish province of Eastern Rumelia.

The congress accepts that Serbia and Romania become independent and that Bosnia-Hercegovina is now to be administered by Austria-Hungary. Russia wins some territory from Turkey on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Britain is granted control of Cyprus. The Ottoman empire continues, on all sides, to shrink.